AUBURN HILLS – It was just a regular-season game, nothing like Game 5 in a playoff series. But Nets CEO Rod Thorn had seen a finish that compared with the Lakers-Spurs fabulous ending Thursday. It came during Thorn’s playing days in Seattle and involved a couple Hall of Famers, Boston’s John Havlicek and current Knick coach Lenny Wilkens.

“We were playing the Celtics and we scored down toward the end of the game and the clock runs out. We beat them by one point. We run off the floor and go in. I have my shirt off and my shoes off and the other guys were in disarray,” Thorn recalled. “They come and tell us the referees say the game’s not over. So we go back out. They put two seconds on the clock.”

The Celtics ran a play for Havlicek, freeing him with a cross-pick and “we don’t guard him and he gets like a two-foot shot,” Thorn said. That left one second on the clock. Wilkens called time.

“We put three guys across the line. Dick Snyder drops back, we throw him the ball and he scores. So we won the game,” Thorn said. “But that wasn’t a playoff game. You’re talking Game 5 of a 2-2 series. The shot Duncan made was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ And then that guy [Derek Fisher] hits that one.”

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On another matter, Thorn said he can accept Kenyon Martin’s decision to skip an Olympic invitation to concentrate on his contract negotiations this summer.

“I can certainly understand,” Thorn said. “He’s a free agent. Obviously that’s your first course of business. There’s always the chance somebody might get hurt in these things. So I’m sure if you asked him, he would really have liked to have played, but the situation is just not conducive for it.”

Martin will be a restricted free agent and new Nets ownership, under Bruce Ratner, has not yet been approved (it’s expected to happen in June). Until then, it’s wait, see and guess.

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The health talk in the series has been largely directed toward the Pistons, specifically Rasheed Wallace’s plantar fasciitis and Chauncey Billups’ back. But Martin still is hurting with tendinitis in his left knee.

“It’s not nowhere near like how bad it was [but] I feel it,” Martin said. “I say it doesn’t matter. I don’t complain about injuries. If I can walk and there’s a game . . . I’m going to play, no matter how I’m feeling. It doesn’t matter. I don’t complain about injuries and all that.”